"But the New York critics are enough to appal the strongest soul," she went on. "They're so unjust sometimes, so merciless, so fiendishly clever in suggesting labels that stick to one through life. Do you remember what they said about Miss Carew—that her play was so feminine she must have done it with crochet needles? And they said Nazimova looked like 'the cussed damosel,' and that Fairbanks had the figure of Romeo and the face of the apothecary. Those things appal me. So for the last few days I've been working on them mentally. I believe in mental science, you know."
She paused for a moment and sat stirring her tea, a reflective haze over the brilliance of her blue eyes.
"Some way," she resumed, "in the forty-eight hours since I've been trying the power of mind on them I have ceased to be afraid of the critics. I realize now that they cannot hurt us or our work. I know they are our friends. I have a wonderfully kind feeling for them. Why,"—her voice took on a seductive tenderness, her eyes dwelt on the fire with a dreamy abstraction in their depths—"now I almost love the damned things!" she ended, peacefully.
My brother Jack choked, then laughed irrepressibly. My sister and I joined him. But my mother was staring at Miss Merrick with startled eyes, while Miss Merrick stared back at her with a face full of sudden consternation.
"Mrs. Iverson," she gasped, "I beg your pardon! I didn't know what I was saying. I was—really—thinking aloud!"
Half an hour later I went with her to the elevator for a final word.
"I'm going straight to the theater," she told me. "Be early, won't you? And come in to see me for a moment just before we begin."
She took my hands in a grip that hurt.
"We're going to win," she said, as she entered the elevator.
It was almost six. I had barely time to dress, to dine comfortably, and to get to the theater before the curtain rose. At every stage of my toilet the inexorable telephone called me; telegrams, too, were coming from all parts of the country. My heart swelled. Whether I proved to be a playwright or not, I had friends—many of them new ones, made during the progress of this dramatic adventure. They would not be too dearly bought, it seemed to me then, even by failure.